Most recipes for things like chili and meat sauces want you to brown the ground meat at the start. The browning adds a meatier flavor to the dish, but it also overcooks it. If you don't brown the meat, you don't get as complex flavor. Serious Eats solution: Brown only some of the meat.

J. Kenji López-Alt explains in his Food Lab column the tradeoff between browning or not browning, and, scientifically, what's happening during the process.

If you brown very well only some of the recipe amount of meat then combine it with the rest of the meat, you'll get the best of both worlds: deep meaty flavor and a tender texture.

For even better results, Kenji recommends starting with chunks of meat (as in Kenji's photo above) and then grinding it.